From a 14-year-old in Queensbridge to the biggest beef of 2001, the East Coast always answered back.
Watch the video: Top 5 East Coast Diss Tracks on YouTube
Some of the hardest records ever made were aimed at one person. On the East Coast, a diss was never just a song. It was a borough, a crew, and a reputation on the line, and the whole city picked a side.
FIVE FACTS FROM THE BATTLE YEARS
1984. Roxanne Shanté was 14 years old when she answered UTFO's "Roxanne, Roxanne" with Roxanne's Revenge. A then-unknown Marley Marl produced it, and it set off the Roxanne Wars, with somewhere between 30 and more than 100 answer records depending on who is counting.
1987. Boogie Down Productions' The Bridge Is Over, from the debut album Criminal Minded, took aim at MC Shan, Marley Marl and the Juice Crew. KRS-One closed it out to the tune of Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me."
1998. Canibus fired Second Round K.O. at LL Cool J. Wyclef Jean and Jerry Wonder produced it, Mike Tyson talks on it, and it peaked at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, the only top 40 single Canibus ever had.
2001. Jay-Z first performed the verses that became Takeover at Hot 97's Summer Jam, aimed at Prodigy of Mobb Deep. The album version landed on The Blueprint that September with a Kanye West beat built on The Doors' "Five to One" and a long third verse for Nas.
2001. Nas answered with Ether on Stillmatic, released December 18, 2001. Rolling Stone has called it one of the wildest diss tracks ever made.
The ranking is in the video. These are the facts around it.
WHERE IT STARTED
Before there were mixtape wars and radio countdowns, there was a teenager from Queensbridge with a cassette and something to say. Roxanne's Revenge spent 12 weeks on the Billboard R&B chart and moved more than 250,000 copies in the New York area alone. It proved something every MC after her would take to heart: the answer record can be bigger than the record it answers.
BOROUGH AGAINST BOROUGH
A few years later the argument was about geography. MC Shan's "The Bridge" was heard as a claim that hip-hop started in Queensbridge, and the South Bronx was not having it. KRS-One answered with "South Bronx" and then The Bridge Is Over, two of the defining records of what became known as the Bridge Wars. The feud ran for years before KRS-One and Marley Marl officially put it to rest with a joint album, Hip Hop Lives, in 2007. The Bridge Is Over went on to become one of the most sampled records in hip-hop.
THE STUDENT AND THE LEGEND
Second Round K.O. is a reminder that a diss can launch a career. The feud started over a guest verse on LL Cool J's "4, 3, 2, 1" and turned into a full single with a heavyweight champion in the booth. LL fired back with "The Ripper Strikes Back," and the back and forth kept both names in every conversation that year.
THE ONE EVERYBODY REMEMBERS
Ask anybody who was around in 2001 and they will tell you exactly where they were when they heard Ether. Takeover was a direct shot: Jay-Z went through Nas's catalog and said he had "a one hot album every ten year average." Ether came back three months later and flipped the whole conversation. The rivalry ended years later with the two on stage together and on the same label, but the records still start arguments at every cookout.
WHAT MAKES A DISS A CLASSIC
The great ones all have the same three things. A beat you would play even without the bars. Lines that people quote word for word decades later. And a target big enough that the whole culture stops to listen. That is why these records outlived the beef behind them.
Think you know which one hit hardest? The video has the ranking. The comments have the argument.
PLAY THE QUESTION
Which producer was behind Roxanne Shanté's "Roxanne's Revenge"?
A. Marley Marl · B. Rick Rubin · C. DJ Red Alert · D. Mr. Magic
Answer: Marley Marl. He produced her famous answer record in 1984. (Straight from the Hip-Hop deck in the app.)
PROVE IT
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